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Don't know what to get for your best biking buddy? BicycleGifts.com offers vintage bike posters, jewelry, and more. Owned by bike advocates, they supported Spokane Bikes/Bike to Work Spokane in our very first year with donations of prizes for participants and Bike Style Spokane is proud to be an online affiliate.
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Tolerance. If you’re already riding, you’ve encountered people who need to tell you all about the “bad biker” they encountered recently. Tolerance (hey, at least they saw the cyclist!) helps these indigestible chunks go down, and it tastes even better if you season it with a big dash of humor.

There’s more than one form of feedback you’ll need to tolerate. You have to be tolerant of those people at work who look at you like you’re crazy (especially on days that are on the rainy or cold side). You might point them to my post that compares the hassle factor of bike commuting compared with driving (although it makes more sense to someone who’s been through the complete psychological conversion process ㋡).

You also have to be tolerant of drivers who tell you all their stories about bad bikers–those sidewalk-terrorizing, helmetless scofflaws (or just cyclists who take the lane as they’re legally entitled to).

If you ride the Centennial Trail you’ll encounter pedestrians with baby strollers who think the “wheels only” lane in Riverfront Park is for them, people who are positive(ly wrong) their unleashed dogs are perfectly polite and would never take a chunk out of a passing cyclist, toddlers who zig when their parents think they’re going to zag, rude cyclists who whiz past without yelling “On your left!” to let you know they’re sneaking up behind you, and other joys of sharing a public space.

Tolerance. Tolerance. Tolerance. We’re all in this together.

Persistence. You can’t try this bike thing once and then quit. After all, that’s not how you learned to ride a bike in the first place.

Your first time testing out the route to work (which should be on a quiet Sunday, by the way, not a busy Monday morning when you’re nervous about being late) may not go that smoothly.

You’ll feel discouraged at times by weather or road conditions. (I have this belief that no one—NO ONE—is more interested in seeing Spokane’s streets improved than cyclists. We are our own shock absorbers and we know street conditions far more—ahem—intimately than any driver.)

On the other hand, maybe your first few trips will be delightful and you’ll figure they’re all going to be like that.

No, honey, they’re not.

Sometimes a grouchy driver does honk and yell at you to get on the sidewalk. (Please don’t.)

Sometimes you leave in the morning on a beautiful sunny day and ride home in the afternoon in a cloudburst (or you get smart and throw your bike onto the rack on an STA bus to ride home in dry comfort).